


As Above

by starmirror



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:02:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21624985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starmirror/pseuds/starmirror
Summary: "Do you know where Darth Vader came from?" he asked.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	As Above

It was a cold morning and Rey wished she had a better jacket. Luke was negotiating something with the caretakers and she had wandered off to stare at the sea before sunrise. It was beautiful, though she had learned it could be cruel. Rey was always tempted to dive from the cliffs into the water to see what it would feel like.

Kylo stood beside her, his hands clasped behind his back. He was wearing a long overcoat. She was jealous of it and hated that he did not need it on a temperature controlled spaceship.

“Do you know where Darth Vader came from?” he asked.

Rey paused and turned to face him. She half expected him to smile and give away that he was teasing her. At first she had been surprised when he delivered sharp barbs or innuendos that made her blush, but she had learned quickly that he had a wicked sense of humour. He was serious, taciturn. He looked out at the water. She did not know how much he could actually see.

“Anakin Skywalker was a Jedi,” she said slowly. “He betrayed his master. He killed his wife and abandoned his children. He was the servant of the Emperor. A murderer.”

“True enough. But he was not always a Jedi.”

Rey had not considered who Anakin Skywalker was, beyond the Jedi that had betrayed his people. Luke had never spoken of him and she certainly did not want to ask General Organa.

Against her better instinct, she asked: “Who was he, then?”

“A servant. Born a debt slave on Tatooine, a desert planet much like Jakku. He was discovered as a child by Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi. After the death of Jinn, he became Kenobi’s padawan.”

“ _Ben_ Kenobi?” Rey asked. The name hung in the air between them. She knew Ben Kenobi, the Jedi Master who taught Luke, was Kylo Ren’s namesake.

“Yes,” he said, resolutely. “The Jedi Council sought to control Darth Vader, to limit his power, to use him for their own political ends. They asked him to give up his anger and forget what had happened to him on Tattooine. To forgive the people that hurt him, that raped and tortured and killed his mother.”

Rey flinched, a hundred memories of Jakku bubbling up inside of her. She had seen many women who lived the same life, lost their children, and died with machine parts in their hands.

“The Emperor used his power,” she said. She remembered the stories they told her when she was a child, the whispers she had overheard about Darth Vader. “He twisted his mind and destroyed Anakin Skywalker.”

“Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker are the same man,” Kylo Ren replied. “You said so yourself. Could you do what they asked of him? Could you let go of what they did to you?”

Rey frowned and crossed her arms. She was suddenly aware of how cold her hands were getting without gloves. “I don’t have to.”

Kylo finally turned to look at her, eyes flashing. “I saw inside your mind. How much you hated them and their greed and cruelty. They took advantage of you. They let you suffer and starve when you were a child.”

“I don’t want to kill them!”

“Are you sure? Not the man who sold you? Not the one that beat you? Not the one that—”

“Stop,” she said quietly. She swallowed the lump in her throat.

Kylo Ren was remarkably still but she could hear in his voice that he was angry, as if he was reliving everything he had seen in her mind. “I know you hate them. You should.”

“The Jedi cannot hate. We must know peace to use the Force.”

“And yet,” he said, his voice as sharp as broken ice, “you do.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Rey insisted. “I choose not to hurt them. I chose to become a Jedi.”

“The Jedi would ask you to reject your hatred, your anger. Your family. They ask you to sacrifice your humanity in exchange for order,” he said. He sounded bitter, as if he was reflecting on his own choices.

Rey felt a wave of anger. What had the Jedi demanded of Kylo Ren? He had thrown away his family and betrayed them. “So the Sith are a compassionate alternative?”

“I am not a Sith,” Kylo Ren replied easily. “I am Kylo Ren. I would ask no more or less of you.”

“A scavenger?” she snapped. She tried to slow down her breathing. She had experienced more emotions in ten minutes with Kylo than in a month of training. It made her connection to the Force feel hot and cold, molten and churning between them.

“You’re a person,” he said. “Not a tool. Make no mistake that the _Rebels_ view you as such. They would love nothing more than to use you to rebuild the order. Have you considered there was a reason the Jedi birthed Darth Vader?”

“He destroyed them!”

“And if Anakin Skywalker was never born, would another have taken his place?”

Rey bit back a laugh. The entire conversation seemed suddenly insane. She imagined telling herself at breakfast that she would be debating the merits of the Jedi with Kylo Ren. “You think what happened was inevitable.”

“More or less,” he said. His face remained uncharacteristically calm. She wondered if he had practiced everything he wanted to say, if he had written it all out. “The Jedi forced the Sith to exist. The Jedi are dead and so are the Sith. The world no longer needs them.”

Rey felt another flash of anger. She twisted the fabric of her shirt in her grip and swallowed it. “You’re talking like you don’t do the bidding of the First Order. The dregs of the Empire. They viewed Finn as nothing more than a tool. And so did you!”

“I am not their dog. Their ideologies are not my concern.”

“Spoken like a true mercenary,” Rey said. “Your father would be so proud.”

Kylo’s mouth pressed into a thin line and his hands clenched into fists. The humid island air suddenly felt suffocating, the sea dark and unyielding. Rey was tense and ready for him to move but he did not. He said nothing.

“Do you just want to talk?” she asked finally. 

He looked back at her. His emotions were always so close to the surface that they flickered and burned. It was overwhelming to be near him and the more in touch with the Force she became the worse it was. She wondered if he knew or if he didn’t care or if he could not control it anyway.

“Yes and no.”

“You can’t always have both,” she said.

Kylo smiled a crooked and genuine smile, not unlike the way Han looked when she had cut the wires on the Falcon. He was so unremarkable and human that she wanted to feel at ease around him. It was terrifying.

“I had a dream.”

Rey wanted to roll her eyes. “A prophetic dream.”

“I thought you placed all your faith in the Force,” he said. “Where are you?”

“You know I won’t tell you. What happened in the dream?”

“We talked.”

She wanted to scream. Maybe this was all a game and the prize was her anger. Did he believe that he could tempt her into a rage that would turn her to the dark side? The bracing cold was a double-edged sword; a gift that grounded her in reality and a cruel twist of fate that made her weaker and weaker the longer she stayed. 

Kylo Ren was right that he was not a Sith, at least not in the sense that he followed their order and believed in their laws. No one did. Wasn’t that what Luke had told her so many times? The Sith and the Jedi were dead. Rey felt her heart twist. She usually felt that their conversations were on her terms, but she no longer felt in control.

“You killed those padawans. You’ve killed a lot of people. You—this is stupid,” she said, her thoughts spilling out into words like an unstoppable river, “I dream about you, but we don’t talk. All you do is hurt me. Sometimes I wake up and I think I can see you and I want to fight but I can’t fight. I just lie there. I can’t even breathe.”

“I didn’t hurt you because I wanted to, Rey. I never wanted to hurt you,” Kylo Ren said. Her heart stopped beating when he said her name. The space between them shrank. “I can make the dreams stop.”

Rey was suddenly aware that her eyes were tearing up. She did not want to make it obvious by wiping them with her hands. “You think I’m going to let you into my head?”

“No, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to offer.”

She let out a bitter laugh. “You are insufferable.”

He smiled again. It faded almost immediately. “I wanted to end the Jedi. I thought… For most of my life, I have been ready to die. And now I find myself thinking about the future.”

“You offered to teach me once,” Rey said.

Kylo Ren finally stepped forward. Rey forced herself to stand still even as her body tried to flinch. A single step would close the distance between them, though they were on opposite sides of the galaxy.

“You are more powerful than you understand. My uncle will never allow you to explore that power. He is afraid that you’re too much like Anakin Skywalker. Tainted with hatred and suffering. And the Resistance… they see only a new Jedi. They don’t see you.”

“What do you see?” Rey asked. She was not sure she wanted to know the answer.

“Possibility,” he replied.

He vanished as the sun broke the horizon. Rey looked down from the cliff into the water below, feeling as if she had already jumped.


End file.
